HB1392 establishes the Medicaid Access Program, which aims to improve healthcare access for Medicaid patients by raising provider payment rates to at least Medicare levels. To fund this, the bill creates a covered-lives assessment on Medicaid managed care organizations (initially up to $18 per member per month) and health insurance carriers (up to $0.50 per member per month), with assessments adjusted annually to cover rising costs. The revenues are deposited into a new dedicated Medicaid Access Program Account and used to increase Medicaid rates across various professional services—such as anesthesia, diagnostics, surgery, behavioral health, maternity, and more—with annual inflation indexing.

The Washington State Senate passed HB1392 on April 14, 2025 by a vote of 31 to 18. We have assigned pluses to the nays because neither healthcare nor social welfare is the legitimate object of government. Medicaid, as with many other “entitlement programs,” discriminatorily and unjustly provides “eligible” low-income persons, who have little or no tax liability, with government funds at the expense of other hard-working citizens. Washington must reject the use of taxpayer dollars for this ever-expanding and unsustainable federal-state program that is not authorized under Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution.